Never Loved At All
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: Can they pretend like they never loved at all? Marsan - Season 8


**Alright, so I got a text yesterday afternoon from my beef-ef saying 'Like We Never Loved At All - Marsan'. And when Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are my favorite artists, who am I not to comply?**

**Dedicated to Rachel. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

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_How can you just walk on by,_  
_Without one tear in your eye,_  
_Don't you have the slightest,_  
_Feelings left for me,_  
_Maybe that's just your way,_  
_Of dealing with the pain,_  
_Forgetting everything,_  
_Between our rise and fall,_  
_Like we never loved at all_**  
**-Faith Hill & Tim McGraw 'Like We Never Loved At All';

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**Love cannot be destroyed; love is infinite, it can never end and only goes on forever. Love is a legacy that can be left for generations after to learn from. Love isn't always the happiest emotion in the world; often times, Love is broken and battered, twisted and torn, falling apart and fraying at the edges. It's like a vine that starts in your heart and swiftly takes over your entire being, consuming a person and making it hard to breathe. You can toss a blanket over it, shove it to the back of your closet and pretend it doesn't exist, but it's still going to rest underneath the surface of your skin and unveil itself at the most inconvenient of times.

Susan Lewis had found these facts about love to ring true; watching her best friend with his wife and daughters, she had felt the pain in her heart overwhelm her and knock the breath from her chest. She saw the anguish in his eyes as he fought to save the remnants of his family and she couldn't stop herself from pleading with God to let it fall apart.

She wanted to cry out to Elizabeth to hang on to him, to not give him up, because once upon a time she had given him up and now knew the pain of loosing him. Once upon a time, Mark Greene had looked at her like she had hung the stars in the sky and even though they'd never gotten a real chance, she had never loved someone as wholly as she loves Mark. He looked at her differently now, like he had never uttered those three solemn words, as if he had never loved her at all.

Time had left them behind. Days gave way to weeks, weeks turned to months, and it seemed like Susan would only ever feel the pain of what could have been. Laughter was sparse and only given in his company, their friendship felt awkward and, while it was better than Phoenix, she still felt miserable. Life had brought them full circle and time had always been their far too fickle friend.

As Mark Greene entered the land of potential divorce number two, his cancer returned twice as vicious and the only woman he could ever really give all of himself to was dating again. She had grown tired of waiting for her turn to roll around and found solace in the arms of John Truman Carter III. He couldn't say that he blamed her and the two of them could battle wits almost as good as Mark and Susan. She was finally laughing again and Mark didn't have the heart to rip that out from under her when he was on his last legs.

Still, their friendship was slowly patching itself, rebuilding itself from the ground up. He could finally read what her eyes were telling him, edge a smile out of her, and lean on her when things got bad. She never offered him another option; despite everything that had gone down between them, she still held him up when the world was pushing him over. As much as he had broken her heart, she was still the one person he could count on at the day's end.

The night after his first gamma knife treatment, sitting on his couch as he fell into exhaustion, she had wrapped her arms around him and let him find his home there. His head resting on her lap and her fingers playing with the little bit of fuzz he had left. He pretended that he didn't feel her salty tears fall from her eyes and land on his face. He pretended not to feel her silent sobs that racked her chest and shook his body. He pretended not to hear her confessions and held his own tears behind his eye lids. They both knew that the end was approaching and all the love in the world couldn't save his life. So, he let her grieve the fact that he was dying, let her mourn the fact that she would have to go on after he slipped from this world.

"I never stopped loving you," She whispered as he pretended to sleep, "If I could stop loving you then maybe all of this wouldn't hurt so much. I loved you then, I love you now, and I'll love you until the end of time. Maybe I loved you before I knew you, I feel as though I've loved you forever."

He waited til her breathing evened out and he was sure she had given into slumber as he whispered into the night, "I love you too, Susan."


End file.
